Born in 1997

What 1997 carries

From the community: Diligent, reliable, patient, resilient, methodical, loyal, pragmatic. May be stubborn, reserved, overly cautious, or resistant to change.

From the year: Cheerful and always smiling; content and happy. Gentle, caring, compassionate. Introverted, calm, steadfast, thoughtful, and fond of preserving old traditions.

The year's Fire feeds the community's Earth. The generosity runs outward — this birth year spends itself on what the Taurus Spirit Guardian is trying to build, which is productive and quietly costly, and it is the combination most likely to need a rest it does not ask for.

The community itself is written out in full on the Taurus Spirit Guardian's page — character, love, work and the communities it is bound to.

All of that is about being born in 1997. What a year does to the people living through it is a separate reading on a separate clock — and, unlike the community above, it does not move at the lunar new year. That is the Year scale of Time Analysis, one of five.

1997 with the years around it

Every year from 1985 to 2009, read against 1997. Twenty-five consecutive years contain every community at least twice and never with the same element behind it, which is the clearest demonstration of the thing these pages keep asserting: the community comes back, the reading does not.

These readings are the first of the board's four layers — the birth years alone — and it carries weight 0.30 of the result. The other three read the two charts rather than the two communities, so a strong or difficult year layer is where a reading starts, not where it lands.

The birth years 1997 is bound to

Nobody goes looking for a community. They go looking for the person born in a particular year, so the four relations worth naming are given here as the nearest year that carries each.

• 1996— the Whale Spirit Guardian,secret friend
• 2001— the Snake Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 1993— the Eagle Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 1991— the Goat Spirit Guardian,opposing axis
• 2002— the Horse Spirit Guardian,harm

Frequently asked

Which Spirit Guardian rules 1997?

1997 belongs to the Taurus Spirit Guardian, the community of foundation, with Earth as its own element. The year's element pillar is Fire (-), which is the part that changes: the community returns every twelve years but the element turns on a ten-year cycle, so 1997 reads differently from 1949 and 1961.

What element is 1997?

Fire (-) — Cheerful and always smiling; content and happy. Gentle, caring, compassionate. Introverted, calm, steadfast, thoughtful, and fond of preserving old traditions. That is the year pillar. It sits alongside the Earth the Taurus Spirit Guardian carries in its own right, and the two together are what make 1997 a different reading from every other year of this community.

I was born in January 1997. Is this still my year?

Probably not. The cycle turns at Lunar New Year rather than on 1 January, so a birth in January or the first days of February usually belongs to 1996 and to the Whale Spirit Guardian. Roughly one birth in eight sits on the wrong side of that line. Add your month and day on the board and it settles the question rather than guessing.

Which birth years are most compatible with 1997?

1996 (Whale Spirit Guardian), 2001 (Snake Spirit Guardian), 1993 (Eagle Spirit Guardian) — the secret friend first, then the trine. 1991 sits on the opposing axis. Those are branch relations only, which is the first of four layers the board reads and carries weight 0.30 of the result; the other three read the two charts rather than the two communities, so a clash here is a starting point and not a conclusion.